Australia Not Even In Top 100 When It Comes To Vaccine Rollout
CoronaCheck is the weekly email newsletter of RMIT ABC Fact Check, designed to fight the wrong information infodemic about the COVID-19 outbreak.
Recently, Mark Butler, the federal Labor’s spokesman for Health, was contacted to ascertain Australia’s position concerning other countries regarding the coronavirus vaccine rollout.
While speaking on the ABC’s RN Breakfast program, Mark Butler revealed that Australia is not in the top 100 CoronaCheck vaccine rollout ranking. He stated that Australia is occupying the 113th position when it comes down to vaccine rollout. In his word, Australia is currently “running 113th in the world on vaccine rollout.”
Australia’s Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, stated that Australia is among the leading countries when it comes to vaccine rollout. He also said Australia is at the “top of the list.” However, Butler refuted this statement when he made it public that Australia is far behind. According to Butler, “we’re so far back we can’t even see the front of the queue.”
When asked about the basis of his assertion, a spokeswoman for Mark Butler stated in an email that the Herald Sun article published on May 25 is the source of Butler’s claim. According to the Herald Sun article, an internet-based research publication operated by Oxford University, ‘Our World in Data,’ placed Australia in the 113th position. The publication ranked Australia “113th among the world’s countries for total doses per 100 residents, falling behind Cambodia, Kazakhstan, and Seychelles.”
Fact Check also supported Butler’s claim, confirming that Australia, having only administered 14.88 doses per 100 people, was genuinely 113th within the world ranking, or thereabouts. However, one cannot wholly rely on this figure. This figure does not represent an accurate picture of how completely vaccinated the Australian population is. Some Covid-19 vaccines need two-dose to be effective, whilst others need just a jab.
As per the Our World in Data, Australia occupies 105th position when it comes to the percentage of the population who had gotten a minimum of one Covid-19 vaccine dose. When it comes to the percentage of the people who have been completely vaccinated, Australia has only fully vaccinated less than 2% of the entire population.
Johns Hopkins University also published a recent article to inform the public about vaccination in Australia. The report revealed that Australia ranked 84th when it came to the share of the population that has received full vaccination. With less than 500,000 persons having received both doses, Johns Hopkins University ranks Australia’s vaccination approach below the international average.
According to the Australian government, out of 40 million doses to be administered, only about 6,860,276 have been administered in the vaccination rollout. It aims to give another 13.6m doses in the current phase of vaccination rollout. According to the government, going at the current pace of about 779,000 doses a week, it expects to administer the entire 40 million doses needed to vaccinate Australia’s adult population in mid-April 2022 fully.
